BY STUART BROWN, MD

I have spent a career studying play, communicating the science of play to the public, and consulting Fortune 500 companies on how to incorporate it into business.

I have used play therapies to help people who are clinically depressed. I frequently talk with groups of parents who inevitably are concerned and conflicted about what constitutes healthy play for their kids.

I have gathered and analyzed thousands of case studies that I call play histories. I have found that remembering what play is all about—and making it part of our daily lives—is among the most important factors in being a fulfilled human being.

The ability to play is critical not only to being happy, but also to sustaining social relationships and being a creative, innovative person.

The Case for Play

Nearly every one of us starts out playing quite naturally. As children, we don’t need instructions on how to play. We just find what we enjoy and do it. Whatever “rules” there are to play, we learn from our playmates. And from our play we learn how the world works, and how friends interact. By playing, we learn about the mystery and excitement that the world can hold in a tree house, an old tire swing, or a box of crayons.

At some point as we grow older, we start to see play as unproductive or even a waste of time. The play that remains is—like league sports—mostly very organized, rigid, and competitive. We become so focused on being productive that if an activity doesn’t build a skill, earn us money, or get on the boss’ good side, we tend to dismiss it or push it aside.

The skeptics among the audiences I talk to will say, “Well, duh! Of course, you will be happy if you play all the time. But for those of us who aren’t rich, or retired, or both, there is simply no time for play!”

Or they might say that if they truly gave in to the desire to experience the joy of free play, they would never get anything done.

The truth is, we don’t need to play all the time to feel fulfilled or see the benefits. Even a small amount of authentic play can make us happier day to day—and more productive, too.

In fact, throughout my career, I have seen again and again that people who have engaged in play throughout their lives tend to be more productive employees and perform better on work-related tasks that at first might seem to have no connection to play at all.

The impact of play extends far beyond childhood. In fact, its influence can be seen in some of the most innovative workplaces and careers.

An example: Cal Tech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been the United States’ premier aerospace research facility for more than seven decades. The scientists and engineers at JPL have designed and managed major components of every manned and unmanned mission of our time, and have been completely responsible for dreaming up, building, and operating complex projects like the robot vehicles that landed on Mars. You might say that JPL invented the Space Age.

No matter how big and ambitious the goal, the researchers could always be relied on to say, “We can do that.”

But in the late nineties, the lab’s management was saying, “JPL, we have a problem.” As the lab neared the new century, the group of engineers and scientists who had come on board in the 1960s—those who put men on the moon and built robotic probes to explore the solar system—were retiring in large numbers. And JPL was having a hard time replacing them.

Even though JPL hired the top graduates from top engineering schools like MIT, Stanford, and even Cal Tech itself, the new hires were often missing something. They were not very good at certain types of problem solving that are critical to that job. The experienced managers found that the newly minted engineers might excel at grappling with mathematical problems at the frontiers of engineering, but they didn’t do well with the practical difficulties of taking a complex project from theory to practice.

Unlike their elders, the young engineers had trouble identifying the core flaw in a system, breaking it down, exploring it from different angles, and reworking its parts in creative ways to find a solution.

The graduates JPL brought abroad had earned the highest grades at the best schools, but clearly academic excellence was not the most important measure of their problem-solving skills. So, in true engineering fashion, JPL leadership analyzed the issue and realized they’d been measuring the wrong qualities in their hiring process. They suspected that problem-solvers and non-problem-solvers could be more accurately identified—if only they could determine the right metrics.

Then the head of JPL found Nate Jones. Jones ran a machine shop that specialized in precision racing and Formula One tires, and he had noticed that many of the new kids coming in to work at the shop were also not able to problem solve. Jones and his wife, a teacher, wondered what had changed.

After questioning the new kids and the older employees, Jones found that those who had grown up using their hands—taking things apart, building, tinkering—were able to “see solutions” that those who hadn’t could not. Jones wrote an article about what he had found, which is how he came to the attention of JPL leadership.

Intrigued, JPL managers reviewed the backgrounds of their own retiring The engineers who excelled at creative problem solving had spent their youth dismantling clocks, building soapbox derby racers, assembling hi-fi stereos, or tinkered with appliances. From that point forward, JPL began including questions about childhood play and hands-on projects in their job interviews.

It turns out, what may on the surface seem like a frivolous or even childish pursuit is ultimately beneficial. It’s paradoxical that a little bit of “unproductive” activity can make one enormously more productive and invigorated in other aspects of life.

The Case for Play—Potential

Play is not only a foundation for problem-solving—it can also help us discover our deepest passions and unique gifts.

This idea—that play is not a distraction from success but often a pathway to it—is echoed in the work of renowned British educator Sir Ken Robinson. He shared the story of Gillian Lynne—the celebrated dancer and choreographer behind Cats and Phantom of the Opera—as an example of how people discover their true calling.

Lynne told him about growing up in the 1930s Britain, about doing terribly in school because she was always fidgeting and never paid attention to lessons. “I suppose that now people would say she had ADHD, but people didn’t know you could have that then,”

Robinson said. “It wasn’t an available diagnosis at the time.”

Instead, school officials told Lynne’s parents that she was mentally disabled. Lynne and her mother went to see a specialist, who talked about school while the girl sat on her hands, trying not to fidget. After twenty minutes, the doctor asked to speak to Lynne’s mother alone in the hallway. As they were leaving the office, the doctor flipped on the radio, and when they were out in the hallway the doctor pointed through the window back into the office.

“Look,” he said, and directed the mother’s attention to Gillian, who had gotten up and started moving to the music as soon as they left.

“Mrs. Lynne,” said the doctor, “your daughter’s not sick, she’s a dancer.”

The doctor recommended enrolling her daughter in dance school. When Lynne got there, she was delighted to find others like herself, “people who had to move to think,” as she later explained it. Lynne went on to become a principal dancer in the Royal Ballet, then founded her own dance company and eventually began working with Andrew Lloyd Webber and other renowned producers.

“Here is a woman who has helped put together some of the most successful musical productions in history, has given pleasure to millions, and is a multimillionaire,” Robinson says.

Of course, if she were a child now, he added, “someone would probably put her on drugs and tell her to calm down.”

There are many more such examples that demonstrate how different forms of play—whether dancing or tinkering with a clock—are far more than just leisure. Play taps into a deep evolutionary force, hardwired into us over millions of years to help us adapt, thrive, and find meaning in our lives.

The Case for Play—Nature

The power of play is not limited to humans. In the animal kingdom, play reveals itself as a universal force that shapes behavior, relationships, and even survival.

Hudson seemed to be a very dead dog. That’s what musher Brian La Doone thought as he watched a twelve-hundred-pound polar bear quickstep across the snowfield, straight toward the sled dogs that were staked away from his camp.

That November, the polar bears in the Canadian far north were hungry. The sea had not yet frozen, denying the bears access to the seals that they hunted from the ice.

La Doone spent much of his life in the polar bear’s territory, and judging from the appearance of this particular bear he knew it had not eaten in months. With a skull-crushing bite or a swipe of its massive claws, the bear could easily rip open one of his dogs within seconds.

But Hudson had other things on his mind. Hudson was a six-year-old Canadian Eskimo sled dog; one of La Doone’s more rambunctious pack members.

As the polar bear closed in, Hudson didn’t bark or flee. Instead, he wagged his tail and bowed—a classic lay signal.

To La Doone’s astonishment, the bear responded to the dog’s invitation. Bear and sled dog began a playful romp in the snow, both opening their mouths without baring their teeth, with “soft” eye contact and flattened hair instead of raised hackles—all signaling that each was not a threat.

The two wrestled and rolled around so energetically that at one point the bear had to lie down, belly up: a universal sign in the animal kingdom for a time out. At another point during their romp, the bear paused to envelope Hudson in an affectionate embrace.

After fifteen minutes, the bear wandered away, still hungry but seemingly sated by this much-needed dose of play.

La Doone couldn’t believe what he’d just witnessed, and yet, he was even more astonished when the same bear returned the next day around the same time for another round of frolicking with Hudson!

By the third day, La Doone’s colleagues had heard about this interspecies wrestling match and his campsite was filled with visitors eager to catch a glimpse of the two new best friends. Every night for a week, the polar bear and Hudson met for a playdate. Eventually, the ice on the bay thickened enough for the famished but entertained polar bear to return to his hunting grounds.

What was it in these animals’ nature that was strong enough to overcome hunger and survival instincts? How can two species that don’t interact peacefully read each other’s intentions well enough to roughhouse—when any misunderstanding can be deadly?

As I began to look at these sorts of questions, I started to see that play is a tremendously powerful force throughout nature. In the end, it is largely responsible for our existence as sentient, intelligent creatures.

One of the hallmarks of play is that it appears purposeless, but the pervasiveness of play throughout nature argues that the activity must have some purpose after all. Animals don’t have much leeway for wasteful behaviors. Most live in demanding environments in which they must compete to find food, compete with other species, and compete to mate successfully.

Why would they waste time and energy on supposedly purposeless activity like play? Sometimes, play activity is even dangerous. Mountain goats bound playfully along rock faces thousands of feet high, and sometimes they fall.

As a scientist, I know that a behavior this pervasive across the evolutionary spectrum very likely has a survival value. Otherwise, it would have been eliminated through natural selection. All else being equal, the mountain goats that are not inclined to play would survive better (they wouldn’t fall off the cliff doing some unnecessary stunt) and would pass on their genes more successfully.

Over time, if this had no benefit, the playful goats would be pushed out of the gene pool by the offspring of the non-players. But that is not what happens, so there must be some advantage to play that offsets the greater risk of death in playful goats.

In fact, play can be scientifically proven to be useful. Animal play researchers Robert Fagen and his wife Johanna spent over fifteen years observing and documenting the play behavior of Alaskan grizzlies. Through careful analysis, they were able to distinguish play from all other types of behavior—and their findings were fascinating: the bears that engaged the most were also the ones most likely to survive. This held true even though play takes time, energy, and attention away from seemingly more essential survival activities like eating.

The real question, then, is why and how play is useful. One major theory is that play is simply practice for skills needed in the future. The idea that when animals playfight, they are practicing fighting or hunting for real later.

However, it turns out that cats that are deprived of playfighting can hunt just fine. What they can’t do—what they never learn to do—is to socialize successfully.

Cats and other social mammals such as rats will, if seriously missing out on play, have an inability to clearly delineate friend from foe, miscue on social signaling, and either act excessively aggressively or retreat and not engage in more normal social patterns.

In the give-and-take of playing, the cats are learning emotional intelligence: the ability to perceive others’ emotional state, and to adopt an appropriate response.

“I believe that play teaches young animals to make sound judgements,” Bob Fagen told me when I visited him in Alaska.

“Play allows ‘pretend’ rehearsal for the challenges and ambiguities of life, a rehearsal in which life and death are not at stake.”

In humans, verbal jousting may take the place of physical rough-and-tumble play. Kids at play can learn the difference between friendly teasing and mean-spirited taunting as they explore the boundaries between those two and learn how to make up when the boundary is crossed. In these interactions, we quickly learn how to navigate the world and adapt to it. In short, we are smarter.

The Case for Play—Adulthood

But what happens when play disappears from our lives? Nature offers a striking example: The sea squirt is an ugly creature. In its adult form it has a tubular shape that resembles a sponge or worm, and in its larvae form it looks like a tadpole—it has a primitive spinal cord and bundle of ganglia that act as a functional brain.

This tiny brain helps it move selectively toward nutrients and away from harm. Like most oceanic creatures, juvenile sea squirts spend their time growing and exploring the sea.

Once the sea squirt grows into adulthood, it attaches itself permanently to a rock or a boat’s hull or pilings. It no longer needs to monitor the world as it did as a juvenile because the passing current provides enough nutrients for it to survive. Its life becomes purely passive.

The adult sea squirt becomes the couch potato of the sea. In a macabre twist, the sea squirt digests its own brain. Without a need to explore or find sustenance, the creature devours its own cerebral ganglia.

It’s like something out of a Stephen King book: “All work and no play make a sea squirt a brain-eating zombie.”

The sea squirt is an example of a basic principle of nature: Use it or lose it. If a capability is not being used, it becomes an extravagance that is jettisoned or fades away. Either we continue growing and developing, or we waste away.

The human brain can keep developing long after we leave adolescence—and play promotes that growth. We are designed to be lifelong players, built to benefit from it at any age. And if we play well into adulthood—as we are built to do—we find opportunities to engage everywhere. The brain keeps developing, adapting, learning about the world, and finding new ways to enjoy it.

The benefits of play don’t end with childhood. In fact, lifelong play is linked to lasting brain health and vitality. Many studies have shown that people who continue to engage in games—and who keep exploring and learning throughout life—not only have a much lower risk of dementia and other neurological problems, but are also less likely to develop heart disease and other conditions that might seem unrelated to the brain.

A prospective study conducted at Albert Einstein and Syracuse universities found that people who regularly engaged in cognitively challenging activities—such as puzzles, reading, and mentally demanding work—had a sixty-three percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease compared to the general population.

A study done in Okinawa, Japan, by the National Geographic Society revealed that engaging in activities including with with young children was as important as diet and exercise in fostering the Okinawans’ legendary longevity.

When we stop playing, our behavior becomes fixed and we gradually stop developing, and when that happens, the laws of entropy take over—things fall apart. Ultimately, we share the fate of the sea squirt and become vegetative, staying in one spot, not fully interacting with the world.

When we stop playing, we start dying.

The Case for Play—Ingenuity

Perhaps the most magical aspect of play is its ability to spark ingenuity and self-discovery, especially in childhood.

Here’s a scene parents around the world know all too well: it’s a second or third birthday, and the big present is brought out. The birthday boy or girl eagerly tears off the wrapping paper to reveal the box, then opens it to find the carefully chosen toy their parent spent so much time picking out.

And yet—much to the family’s chagrin—the child is far more interested in interacting with the box than with the toy inside.

Parents should be happy about such a turn of events! It shows that their child has developed a healthy play drive, one that comes from their own fantasies and desires. The box is a blank slate—something they can transform through imagination into anything they want.

When play arises out of innate motivations it is also likely timed to occur when we are primed for the most synaptic neural growth.

We often think we’re helping our children by encouraging them to interact with the toy rather than the box, or by filling their schedules with structured, adult-led activities. And to some extent, these experiences do support socially approved behaviors and reinforce our sense of being attentive, responsible parents.

But in doing so, we may unintentionally rob them of something far more valuable: the time and freedom to discover their own deepest interests and talents. We may be depriving them of access to an inner motivation for an activity that will later blossom into a motive force for life.

I remember a time when self-organized play was simply what kids did. Most adults over the age of forty-five probably recall exploring on their own—through puddles and fields or on city streets. The only real instruction from parents was to be home by dinner or before dark.

The pick-up games of my youth were typical of those that spontaneously cropped up in vacant lots and parks across the country. Despite the seeming anarchy, these games existed within the overall, agreed-upon sense of structure, and fairness.

These games certainly let me know who I was: feisty, vulnerable, a fairly fast and shifty runner, but not as gutsy a tackler or as courageous a blocker as my brother.

I needed his protection and that of his friends to take on the challenge of the games, and they freely offered it. It was terribly important to get in the game—and belong.

I remember feeling…fierce. But it was okay to cry if you got hurt. Not okay to cheat or whine. Not okay

to make fun of one of your own team members, but okay to ridicule someone on the other team. If teams changed in the middle of the game, it was then okay to try to verbally humiliate the former teammate.

Looking back now, these play-inspired portraits of me and others feel more real, persistent, and predictive of life to come than any other molding experience. Certainly, parents and mentors are pivotal, but the self that emerges through play is the core, authentic self.

Alas, these kinds of activities are becoming rare, but on the other hand, I believe that by the age of ten or eleven, kids, even on the soccer and Little League fields today, create their own, private play domains, which may seem like simple goofing off when the coach isn’t looking. Nature’s design for play is just too strong to be pushed aside completely.

For me, this gets to the heart of the matter. Play is how we are made, how we develop and adjust to change. It can foster innovation and lead to multimillion-dollar fortunes. But in the end, the most significant aspect of free play is that it allows us to express our joy and connect most deeply with the best in ourselves, and in others. If your life has become barren, it brings it to life again.

Ultimately, play is more than a pastime—it is a vital ingredient for growth, connection, and joy at every stage of life. When enough people raise play to the status it deserves in our society, we will find the world a better place.

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Stuart Brown, MD, is a medical doctor, psychiatrist, clinical researcher, and the founder of the National Institute for Play. The producer of a three-part PBS series, The Promise of Play, Brown has also appeared on NPR and his research was featured in a cover story in the New York Times Magazine. He lives in Carmel Valley, California, and works out of his office treehouse.

Well Being Journal adapted the above excerpt from Play by Stuart Brown, MD. Copyright © 2009 by Stuart Brown and reprinted with permission by author.